Word: canteen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...unhooking me. She put a wad of cotton and a super-sized bandaid over the puncture. Then the nurse told me to sit up slowly and wait for an escort. A nice old lady wearing a volunteer's blue orderly coat escorted me arm-in-arm over to "the canteen." I was seated at a table and told to stay there at least 15 minutes to rest and eat crackers, cookies, and have something to drink (coffee, Coke, or Seven-Up). The wives of some big Harvard men were in the canteen serving us, including Mrs. Farnsworth, Mrs. Dorfman...
...some were aloof. On the stage, wherever that was, Dick Gregory spoke, and later Arlo Guthrie spoke and sang. Soon someone started speechifying. We tuned out. We ate the best apple God ever made, and we passed eggs and cookies too. A friendly, crazy old man handed us a canteen of "cold wheat coffee...
After a time I couldn't take the huge empty loncliness of the hospital grounds so I went back into O-Building and stood in the corner of the canteen. To the left was the stairway up to O-2 and next to it was the entrance to O-1, a women's ward. Two women patients with gray hair ran the canteen. There was always a buzz of activity around the counter where coffee and cigarettes and doughnuts and candy were sold. It wasn't especially living activity, but it was activity just the same. Patients from other wards...
EVENTUALLY I left the canteen and walked up to O-2. The caged-in stairwell was like a pressure chamber and I felt as if I were passing into a deeper, deader, and even more remote region...
...monk because all I did was sit curled up in a chair and never spoke to anyone. Then lan and I walked down the caged-in stairwell and I looked down and said goodby to the civil defense water and then we walked through the O-Building canteen and said goodby to Snoopy and Charlie Brown on the wall, still saying that happiness was the O-Building canteen, and then out into the sunlight...